


Mithril Man

by LittleLinor



Category: Everworld Series - K. A. Applegate
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of scars and trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mithril Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azalee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azalee/gifts).



> I wasn't sure how to tag it, but warning for various Senna-inflicted traumas.

There is a small, almost unnoticeable scar on Jalil's face.  
He doesn't talk about it, just accepts it like everything that comes into his life once he's made it fit in the model of how the world works (magic took some time, but he's starting to see some patterns). But it still makes a part of him cringe when he sees it in the mirror, a slightly lighter line of skin on the soft spot where cheek meets orbit.  
There are others, on his body, cuts that didn't heal quite as fast as they should have because they were tired and dirty and running away was often more important than bed rest. But he can't help but see this one whenever it comes into his field of vision, not so much because it's on his face, but because he can't decide if he's the one who put it there or if Senna did. Both would be arguable.  
Figures she'd find a last way to mark him before she went. As if she had known she was going to die and had to do something to him since she hadn't managed to before, not the way she had for David or Christopher or even April, whose childhood had been shaped by her.  
She'd made sure he could never forget the shame of his broken mind, even if he left the real world for good. And if she hadn't done it on purpose, well her instincts for harm were even stronger than he thought.  
He had called it torture. And that's what it was, for him. Not the physical pain, that had never been his problem. Pain was a normal reaction, a warning from your brain that there was something wrong going on with your body and it required your attention. Pain was inconvenient, and yes, painful, but he could understand it, handle it. But the torture had been deeper, a stab into his mind and self-worth.  
Not a clean stab, either. Nothing like what excalibur would have done. Senna's cuts were barbed arrows. Removing them did even more damage than the first hit.  
And now that Senna's dead he is left with that scar, that last smug reminder of his failings, as if the human losses of the war they brought in their wake wasn't enough.  
He tries to ignore it. Then tries to live with it, as a part of him. It's a delicate balance, and he wishes he could wear scars with David's applomb.   
Of course David would be the kind to wear them as medals. Somehow, David with more scars looks even more like David. Like the American teenager had been a strange, unfinished copy.  
Christopher doesn't look half as comfortable with his. Maybe it's because he's the only one of them who actually came close enough to death to inform them all that yes, if they died in Everworld, the remaining copy of them back in America would die too (and that in itself is a miracle, now he thinks about it. There should have been closer calls in those weeks of running around with half of Everworld on their heels. But of course it had to be Christopher, the one person among them who had absolutely no heroic streak, who got the near death experience).  
Or maybe it's because no matter how you look at it, there's no way you can make shrapnel wounds look cool and manly instead of serious and mildly disturbing.  
Once you could have described Christopher as "hot surfer dude". Now see him naked and if you thought "surfer dude", it was "dude who surfed a bit too close to the sharks".  
"It sucks," says Christopher one day when they're tired enough and hopeless enough and crazy enough to talk about it. "I mean, Iron Man makes it look all cool and glamour. Maybe I should've gotten them closer to the heart, and I'd be running around with a magic equivalent of an arc-reactor."  
Jalil can't help but smile. A tired smile, but one nonetheless. Christopher does that to you, especially when his jokes stop being attempts to cut out what's happening and start being about taking things in stride instead.  
"You'd make a terrible super-hero, Christopher. Leave that to David."  
"No, man, Tony and I would be great pals. Cynical womanisers with an alcohol problem." He takes a gulp of beer to push his point. "I wouldn't mind having a tower with my name on it, either."  
"Because your name isn't phallic enough. Do I need to break out Freud?"

Christopher still hides his chest more than he used to. Jalil doesn't call him out on it. Somewhere, in the same corner that in Jalil's mind contains "you're still a crazy you know", there's a voice in Christopher's head that tells him that his looks and his sense of humour were all he had going for him, and in a world where all his references are void, looking like Frankenstein's Thing isn't a good choice.  
But he doesn't hide from Jalil as much, at least, which is both a good and a bad thing. Good because the idiot has to relax around _someone_ , and bad because it means it's Jalil's responsability, and Christopher is anything if not a handful.  
All inuendo aside.

But then one day after wine (not enough to be drunk, but maybe enough to have something to blame) and banter and small jabs that shouldn't hurt anymore but still do a little it's not aside anymore, and Jalil isn't sure why he's doing this, why his hands are all over Christopher's skin, why it doesn't bother him as much as it should, and there is something profoundly ironic in the fact that the present Senna tried to enslave him with is now allowing him to get from Christopher the kind of abandon she could never have gotten from him without magic. So much for bewitching.  
He still cares about Etain, Jalil knows that, and Christopher's eyes confirm it, with the way they dart to the side, try to look away until he forces them back to Jalil, both thankful and apologetic.   
Apology. That's one thing he's learned over their time together. He's learned it the hard way, just like he's learned how to not hurt people, why not to hurt people, the way he's trying not to hurt Jalil right now.  
It's endearing, that hesitation, the way he looks like he wants to dismiss the seriousness of all this with a joke but doesn't.   
He trusts and lets himself go, eyes closing, hand making its way to Jalil's hair, body jerking into Jalil's circled hand and under his exploring fingers. Jalil can feel the ridges on his skin, the alternating smoothness and tightness of skin and scar tissue, and when he presses with his hand on the side of Christopher's chest he feels something harder inside that makes Christopher whine a little, and not just from pleasure.   
He absentmindedly murmurs Jalil's name when Jalil takes his hand away and brings it back to a less threatening zone, and Jalil feels a mix of annoyance and affection, because the idiot's trusting him way too much and there's no way anyone could betray him when he turns into an earnest little puppy like that.   
(Except for Senna, of course, but from what he can tell Senna was the kind to make David _want_ her to abuse him, and the less he can compare himself to her the better)  
He hasn't asked for this responsability, he's got enough of his own madness to deal with without worrying about other people's, but then he trusts Christopher too, to be the best support he has and then let him be righteously angry by making an offensive joke, and Jalil figures he owes him that much.  
The scar might remind him that he still doesn't trust himself, but Christopher trusts him, and for someone who still has a war against an alien god to fight and a dwarven mine to modernise, it will have to do.


End file.
